


of which do i change

by Pinnacle of Failure (Cromirn)



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blind!Sakura, Blindness, Gen, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, characters will be added as they come
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-15
Updated: 2019-01-16
Packaged: 2019-08-24 05:36:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16633943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cromirn/pseuds/Pinnacle%20of%20Failure
Summary: It starts and it ends in confusion. There never was a true destination in life, in what she was and what actually defined her. But one thing happened, and now she is someone, her name is on the lips of the Hokage and Clan heads and now they see who she is. Too bad she can't do that anymore.But she takes pride in that. She has pink hair and green, useless, eyes. She is an anomaly in her own right, and that makes her strong, that makes her a terror in her own right.





	1. change

It starts like this. They’re somewhere near Nara territory. Sakura has never been there, neither has Ino. They are lost, but Ino knows what she’s doing. Where she’s going. Ino always knows.

“Inoo!” She whines, lagging behind her energized friend, “Why are you bringing me out here. It’s gonna be a long walk back home, and I know you have something else planned, Ino. I just know it.”

“You know what?” Ino sings, and rushes a head, nearly stumbling over a fallen log. “That I just learned something and I wanna use you has my lab rat? Or that I found something _really_ cool and really something you’d be interested in, Sakura-chan?”

That piques her interest. “Like what?”

Ino waves a hand nonchalantly. “Oh, y’know, special and absolutely unique ways to make you stronger.”

“But I’m not from a clan, Ino,” Sakura mentions, and lets her hand pet the side of a tree feeling the groves and dips of the bark, “You know this.”

“Yes, but don’t you want to know what it’s like to be in another persons head? I know that I do, but papa wont let me try it on someone until we graduate. I don’t want to wait that long!”

“Ino,” Sakura murmurs, “Your papa just wants you to be safe, I don’t think we should do this.”

Scoffing, Ino strides a little faster. “Sometimes papa isn’t right. Sometimes ma’ is, and sometimes she isn’t. Sometimes I’m right, and sometimes I’m not. I’m right about this, though. I’m sure of it.”

Sakura sighs, because she knows where this is going. “Ino, you know how I feel about that, don’t you?”

Ino pivots on her heel to face Sakura, something glinting in her eyes. “Yeah, I know that, Sak, but it’s not like that, I swear. I just wanna know what it’s like to be a Yamanaka. What it’s like to see into someone else's mind.”

“Look, I agreed to help you, I just don’t want to hear… about that anymore, ‘kay?”

“Yeah, yeah, sorry Sakura,” She tells, and finally they reach an acceptable spot. It’s a small clearing, smack dab between three trees and almost swallowed by some weird smelling bush.

Ino is the first to settle down, patting down her dress to shake away any debris, and then tilting her head expectantly at Sakura. She gestures for her to sit in front of her, and Sakura obliges.

“I wanna see in your head,” She starts, “Papa had me memorize the theories and stuff, I know what I’m doing I swear.”

Sakura shrugs, “I trust you,” she hums softly, “how long do you think this will take, though? I don’t want to get home too late. You know how my parents are.”

Ino scoffs, “Man, I wish my parents were as vocal about your safety, mine only tell me that someone’s always watching. That there are eyes _everywhere_.” She rolls her wrists, and positions them in front of her, molding her nimble fingers in a well practised hand sign. 

“Will it hurt?” Sakura asks, feeling shy to move now that Ino plans on casting an actual jutsu on her.

“Uhm, I don’t think so.” Ino shifts where she sits, and closes her eyes. “I have to concentrate, Sakura-chan, sit still and be quiet please.”

It’s quiet for a short moment, then Ino’s eyes shoot open, “Mind Body jutsu!” She shouts.

It hits Sakura like a pile of cold, frosty snow. She blanks out, her vision snaps to grey to silver then black, and there’s spots in her vision of pink and red and white. Her body physically thwumps back, her head catches of a rock, and it shakes her brain.

It ends like this. Sakura is bleeding. She can’t see, and it feels like she just did a forty yard lap behind the school. Her lungs burn, her hands claw at the dirt, shards of rock slip underneath her nails. She is lost, and it seems that Ino doesn’t always know where they are.


	2. developement

Politics were never fun. They had their hands full with running a trade between Iwagakure and Konohagakure, and some more between other, more minor, countries. They needed only one child to give their life's work onto whence they passed, but now it seems that fate has duped them again. A blind heir is…

Well, it’s certainly not good luck, but it’s not bad either, depending on which parent you ask. Sure, they have the resources to train her to read with her fingers, to feel for every crevice and every dip in paper but they know that they would have to take her away to do that. They know how sensitive she is right now, how she clings to that Yamanaka who caused the injury upon their only child. How she weeps for her sight yets begs for Ino when she rests. 

Mebuki lets the girl enter their home, but only for their daughter's sake, she tells her husband. Only for what is left of what Sakura is, she remarks.

Kizashi couldn’t care any less about the Yamanaka. He considered blocking them from buying his merchandise, but he doubts that his business would live long enough for such an action especially now that they have to stay home to watch over their child. It’s enough for him to hide from his family for a few days after the incident. Plans are now changed in occurrence of the new changes to his daughter, he now either has to bring her along to their long, and if anything, boring meetings, or ask people to come to him.

Having strangers in his own home leaves a bitter taste in his mouth.

Yamanaka Inoichi tries to make amends with the small Haruno clan. Too bad neither Kizashi nor Mebuki are the actual clan heads, otherwise he would have said no. The Haruno clan head doesn’t bother answering for nigh two months, and within that time Sakura had improved her mental stability, even without the help of the obnoxious Yamanaka.

When the letter does come through, one telling Kizashi and Mebuki that the clan will accept the amends, and that Haruno Sakura will take therapy from an assigned Yamanaka for her ‘trauma’ and another for her eyes, and another note addressing their daughters status as a Haruno, they don’t know whether or not to cry or to defect from their family name and live off the land far, far from any sort of civilization.

Haruno Sakura is no more, abandoned by her own clan by the mere fact of blindness, left behind for the mistreatment of one with her new found disability in their world. 

The thing is, they knew something of this would happen. They are a branch family, technically, and they can’t dispute what their higher ups tell them what they are. They are, also and however, a clan with strong roots of northern Iwagakure, where the weak are tested by their ability to live, to survive falling off cliffs and ridges and horrible, gorey slashes that are done by nothing more than a particularly sharp edged rock. Where the blind are led by the blind and told to leave, to see who has the ability to survive the cold and bitter night.

They are left with no options. Sakura, in all technicality, is no longer their daughter. She will be fed by them, of course, clothed and kept with a roof over her head, but she has been disgraced by the clan head. She has been exalted by the name she loved, that she cherished, that she wrote so beautifully on her school paperwork, all because of what was their past. Of what they were and what they have done generations ago.

They won’t fight it, but they at least give Sakura the hope that she will take another.

“Names are only names. You will lose it eventually, like most shinobi do, but in return you will gain something more you than the one we gave you,” Mebuki hums, combing the bristled brush through Sakura’s pink locks, “You can become whatever you want, of course. You can become sole heir to our merchant trades, you can become a librarian, baker, whatever you want, whatever you can grab.”

Mebuki knows when her daughter wants to speak, but it’s harder now after what happened that day. After the first session with the Yamanaka therapist that they were given, he told them that not only was the occipital lobe damaged, but also the area where it can affect her speech. He tells them that the damage there is not as bad as what has happened to her sight, and that she will eventually learn to speak normally with the right amount of practice and dedication, but Sakura is not one for outright dedication for such a thing as language. It had come naturally to her before, but now she is uncertain about it now.

One day, early in the morning, Sakura walks out of her room and into the kitchen. This fact is important because not only is she out of her room out of her own violation, but she made it to the kitchen with little sound following after her. Her parents rest at their small dinner table, and her unfocused eyes seem to know where they are.

“I want to become a shinobi,” She tells them, and they share a look. “Ino-chan tells me that it’s still possible for me.”

“Sakura,” Her father says, his voice low from the morning, or maybe in threat of her request, “It’s a dangerous world out there, and people will use your blindness as a weakness.”

“Blindness is not all weakness. It has its own opportunities others won’t have-”

“Don’t do this to us,” her mother now cuts in, an edge in her voice somewhat like her fathers but something also softer, pleading, “There are so, so many options we can give, you, something that is less stress and more rewarding.”

Sakura is silent for a few moment, and Mebuki and Kizashi don’t know what her exact response will be. Sakura is a smart girl, she knows her way around her parents. She knows what she wants, but it seems that she is no longer wanting to debate with them now as she turns around and blindly wonders around the house. 

Her fingers investigate everything now, and Mebuki’s slim history as a kunoichi tells her that Sakura already has that opportunity blindness has given her, as much as she hates the thought.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lol i felt like i left some things out but thats prolly bc idk where to put them tbh.
> 
> the harunos are an actual clan now, they have some history up in iwa. It's kizashi that gave everyone the name, while mebuki obvi came from kiri bc i am a slut for kiri!sakura
> 
> the fact that she was kicked out of her clan was something i did for mere funsies i guess, but it also gives her more of a reason to be a shinobi. Shes heard of stories of people like the sannin and the white fang, kakashi of the sharingan, etc etc. her logic is is that if she loses her name, shell make one herself and prove to everyone that she can survive on her own, that she deserves the name.
> 
> in a beautiful world, the head of the haruno clan would beg for her to be apart of their ranks again, and she would flip them off and tell them they had their chance. but they did have their chance, and thats what made her the way she is and they know it. even the lowest of the low can still believe they have pride.
> 
> also, this update was fueled by the fact that i am probably dehydrated and lacking on the sleep. I will regret this tomorrow morning if anything, or forget that i even published this and wonder why the fuck the thing i literally started yesterday already has two chapters.


	3. name

It’s been roughly eighty-three days since she lost her sight. It’s… not as easy as she wished it was, but she’s making progress. Being babied the way she is makes her feel awkward and like a burden, like she’s something that only became special because of what she was forced into.

She- she’s not fine with that. Haruto, that Yamanaka she sees every week, says that it’s okay for her to tell people that she’s not fine with it. That she doesn’t want to be a child anymore. She knows what her parents will say, though, that she’s nine and she knows nothing of the world outside of Konoha.

The only one she knows who doesn’t baby her is Ino, but it even took her a while to break that habit. She was, after all, the one who made Sakura the way she is right now.

Sakura doesn’t feel right anymore. She doesn’t tell Ino, and she barely touches with it when she talks to Haruto, but she knows that this will spill over and ruin every progress she made. She’s not sure if she wants that to happen or not. Progress is an old friend of hers, and it would be such a shame to lose all of it for some stupid wish. For a series of stupid, stupid childish actions.

She’s almost _ten_ , she doesn’t have the time anymore to be a child, by shinobi law she’ll be a legal adult the moment that headband touch her forehead.

And she wants to have a name again, she wants to have that something that was taken from her for a stupid, _stupid_ reason. It’s not that easy, though, what she wants will cause conflicts with her parents, maybe even her clan( _but what do they want with her, the little something in the back of her head cries out, she is no more to them, she is dead_ )

She would cause pandemonium, of which she wants, and others would be collateral damage. Sakura doesn’t know what she wants( _to cause chaos and unorderly actions against what created this world, to make it bleed and burn and to have every nose filled with ashes and blood and the air be permeated with the stench of rot and decay the water turned brown with bodies and mud and the sky red with the flames of her-_ )

Controlling her thoughts have become harder than it used to be. Sometimes it creates snide remarks to passerbys, sometimes it comments on something she did, maybe the occasional snarl of words that never seem to tie themselves together, but never has it gone through such lengths to rant like this in her mind. She thinks it might have something to do with what Ino did to her, but Ino has already lost so much of what she did, and the last thing Sakura wants to do is take away the blonds most ambitious goal- to become a shinobi.

It’s a fools idea to say no to the shinobi lifestyle to a clan kid, let alone the future clan head. Sakura knows this, and she also knows what happened to her means nothing to the ones in power. A future figure to lead the clan versus a small civvie kid, who would win? Who would win the physical and mental fight, the political and domestic wars, who would win?

It was a landslide win against her. 

Life has been different. Ino reads to her theories of sensory skills, of the late second Hokage and beyond that, the idea that she could one day see again nothing more than a fantasy hastily shoved at the back of her head. She tries them at home, the smaller ones, of course. The ones that have a small chance of backfiring, ones that are proven to have a less than 1 in 10,000 percentage of failing on her in this domestic setting. She’s sure that her mother knows what she’s doing, her history in the Mist Corps blatant the way the Uchiha Police Force treats her and her family.

Her mother does so much for her. She helps her pick her clothes, making sure they match the way Sakura likes it, she helps her remember where things are in the house and makes sure she remembers where they are for next time, and helps her pack for the academy. Gone are the days where Sakura wakes up alone and leaves for the academy, gone are the days where she is independent. Gone are the days where Sakura sees what she is.

Father on the other hand… finances have been rough since that day. Her parents traveling cut short left them with less money than desired, and now they have had to cut down on some of the necessities. He’s taken it on himself to travel by himself. He joins the caravans, of course, left without his wife’s strength and expertise on the field.

She feels like a burden. They are doing so much for her already, and now they change their lives for her? No. She doesn’t want that.

Striving for her independence is the core of her ambition. She had nothing before, but now there’s this hole that stands before her. It will only continue to take and take and it will leave her a husk of what she could be.

She wants to have a name again. She doesn’t want to be just and only Sakura. She doesn’t want to be Haruno Sakura again. She wants to have her own name, given to her by the people or herself, she will earn that name, and only will she be the one to own that moniker.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ha, i literally mention inner once and thats even tho she speaks twice. haha i love plot bunnies, or plot snowballs because they will only build up more and more until i get my own fucking snow man or two


	4. learn

It’s another three months before she convinces her parents to let her go back to school. Her mother makes her promise that she’ll be safe, to stay close to Ino or someone she trusts. Her father, well, he fixes the mess that she created. He still manages connections, but now he’s also had to hire some of his cousins to physically manage some connections, absorbing almost thirty percent of his income. They have to start cutting back on their expenses. Haruno Kizashi also has to start attending meetings with the Yamanaka, taking the seat of their clan head and speaking for his daughter.

Life changes, but it doesn’t end. Not the kind of ending that Sakura thinks the end is, anyway.

She goes back to school one hundred and ten days after that incident. It feels like an eternity that she hasn’t been there, seen the familiar faces, felt the looseleaf paper beneath the pads of her fingers. It’s a relief to hear the changes in her friends, the new things that has happened when she was gone, the weird concoction that Kiba had made for the teacher, or the new facts about bugs that Shino has. They don’t question where she’s been, and Sakura assumes that Ino filled them in as much as she could legally release.

Information that the successor to the Yamanaka Clan Head title had destroyed a young, innocent child's future with one misstep would surely throw the clan into mayhem. Her father had told her about what could happen if anything accusing the Yamanaka’s of assault would do to her. Would do to Ino.

She doesn’t want to hurt Ino.

“Did it hurt?” Naruto asks, his voice dangerously loud and right next to her ear. She winces, and coils closer to Kiba, or who she thinks is Kiba. It could be Shino, as far as she knows.

“Hey!” Kiba barks, his voice low and much raspier than it was before. He is at least trying to be considerate of her precious ears. “Don’t be so loud, idiot. She needs her ears to hear and she can’t hear shit when you’re so loud next to her.”

“Oh,” Naruto whispers, and cloths rustles as he retreats back some, “Did it hurt when you lost your eyes?” His voice is much lower now, a bare whisp against the wind and hard to catch.

Sakura grasps Kiba’s sleeve, the neoprene material thick and almost new underneath her fingers. “They’re not lost. They’re just… not working right.”

“Why don’t they work right?” His voice is rough, but not in concern for her, but in the way that he is loud and does not let his voice rest. It’s rough in the way where it grates her ears like how her Great Uncle’s voice peels at the ears after his years of abuse of smoking and hollering. “What kind of things happened for that to… happen?”

She shrugs, and turns her face from where his voice stands and pulls at Kiba’s sleeve. “Take me to Ino.”

Kiba sniffs loudly, and she smiles. At least he’s being nice about it.

Sakura takes two steps in every one she takes, still getting used to navigating the world without her sight. Foot down, tap, next foot. Rinse and repeat. Steadiness is important to be a ninja.

Ino’s chakra is small, smaller than most people that Sakura knows. It’s not bad, her mother says that it’s because she’s still developing, because some people don’t start growing their pools until they’re older, stronger. She also told her this folktale that she grew up on, about the finfolk who only grew when they were happy, who only gave when given and took when taken. It’s a complex tale, one of those older ones where, in the end, everyone dies or faces some misery. It’s unlike the ones she told before she lost her sight, where there were a prince and a princess.

“Hey,” Sakura chirps, and reaches a hand out towards Ino. A soft, familiar hand meets hers, “hey, do you think I can come hang out later? Mom said that she has to be somewhere later on today and said that I should go hang out.”

“Ehm,” Ino clears her throat, and not in a way that said that she was gonna say yeah. Sakura persists though, a soft smile clambering on her face, “I think I might be good later, but after school I’ll have to attend a meeting with my father. Something about my skills and whatever. Y’know, clan stuff.”

She bobs her head aimlessly, and tilts her head down. The teacher’s desk chair creaks as he stands, all the way from the other side of the room, and softly clear his throat. She looks at where she hears him, and notices that Kiba and Ino follow. Ino procures a writing utensil from her pencil case, and Kiba drags her back off to sit next to him.

Iruka-sensei clears his throat loudly. The soft hum of excited chatter dissipates slightly, before shutting off completely and being replaced with the squeaking sound of chairs scraping against the cold, tiled floor as people began to sit down. The noise irks her ears.

“So,” Iruka-sensei begins, “The Academic Administration has decided to install a new course to the program. It’s built to be essential for the upcoming genin, and can even be applied to those who won’t pass and build their lives in the civilian sector or in the medical fields. The Private Emissary of Artisanries will be implemented in the next few weeks while we address each and every one of you to customize a special regime that can be kept, and adjusted, throughout your entire career whichever you choose in the future. This is a new thing and the administration isn’t absolute on it will stay forever, but they want to give it a trial run and fix any bugs that might come through. Eventually, they strive to make the Private Emissary of Artisanries an umbrella program built for the production of spies, detectives, moles, and secret agents.

It is imperative that you take this course professionally and as excellently as you can, as this is one of the few things that can get you into T&I, Special Corps, and a multitude of other ambitious sectors of the Konoha military forces.”

And with that, he sits back down and tells them to finish their worksheets.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> come join the the place where i get most of my good ideas, Genjutsu Support Group


End file.
